10 questions with Jaguar’s director of design, Ian Callum

As a teenager, Ian Callum loved to draw cars – and after sending some of his sketches to Jaguar, their response set the wheels of destiny in motion

That Ian Callum ended up as the director of design for Jaguar would almost seem preordained. A precocious artist, at 14 years old he impetuously submitted some drawings — one that looked suspiciously like the C-X75 that recently lit up the screen in James Bond’s Spectre — to Bill Haynes, then Jaguar’s technical director. Haynes counseled a youthful Callum that “far more emphasis should be shown by the shading and light lines, which is mainly learnt at Art School.”

As a teenager, Ian Callum received a letter from Jaguar advising him to attend art school – so he did. The rest is history.Handout /
Courtesy of Ian Callum

Callum took the advice to heart, eventually graduating from London’s Royal College of Art with a master’s degree in vehicle design. Still, one can’t help think that chalk and brush are in Callum’s genes; brother Moray is the vice-president of design for Ford of the Americas.

1) Automotive design is … the bringing together of facts and requirements, and combining them in the most exciting way possible in something that is dynamic and beautiful.

2) The car that inspired me to become an automotive designer was … the Porsche 356. Although later in life, during my teenage years, it was the Jaguar XJ6.

3) My first car was … a Volvo PV544 customized by Peter Stevens [a great designer of cars in his own right, a tutor at the Royal College and, for five years, the chief designer at Lotus cars. Stevens also penned the Jaguar XJR-15 and the original McLaren F1 supercar].

4) The first part of an automobile I designed that reached production was … a door mirror for a Transit van, swiftly followed by a Transit steering wheel, circa 1980.

6) If I could put my name on any competitor’s product it would be … the Porsche 911.

7) The hardest part of designing an all-new automobile is … meeting all of today’s objectives while pushing the boundaries for the future. My job is to make sure that we are different when so much of the industry is pushing towards homogeneous design. Being unique stylistically has long been Jaguar’s calling card.

8) The biggest surprise I ever got from the public’s reaction to one of my designs was … the F-Pace. I am stunned at the total acceptance of something that once upon a time I would never have considered.

9) The C-X75 received all manner of publicity in James Bond’s Spectre; the reason Jaguar isn’t producing it is … due to prioritizing growing our brand into other sectors.

10) I wish the F-Type had … more colours, including an all-red interior.

Some of Ian Callum’s earliest drawings, which he sent to Jaguar when he was a teenager